The Frugal Oenophile is wine writer and educator Richard Best. His Lexicon of Wine Tasting Terms is acclaimed as the best wine reference for winemakers, winery personnel and any wine enthusiast.

December 22, 2012

Some Thoughts on Natalie Maclean’s “Predicament”

Poor Natalie. Just when you think you
have the world by the by the tail, you end up with a hand full of… uh... disappointment.

First off, no one has cited Natalie
for plagiarism. The main charge is copyright infringement. That means she
reproduced material that belonged to someone else with neither attribution nor
permission, and she did it to help earn a profit. Plagiarism is putting your
name on someone else’s material. But how is this so different from taking
someone else’s work and displaying it in such a way that it will likely be
construed as your own? The material that was appropriated was taken from an
LCBO publication. Did the LCBO give permission to ‘borrow’ the reviews? Did the
authors? One of the first things they teach you in journalism school is attribution.
If you didn’t write it, then putting the author’s name there is NOT OPTIONAL. More
importantly, the LCBO always attributes material to the authors, so Natalie
purposely removed or neglected to add names to the reviews.

As wine writers, we are journalists.
And we are consumer advocates. There really is only one currency in this
business: our credibility. We gain credibility by sticking to the rules, by not
taking ‘pay-offs’ and by avoiding ANY suspicion of bias. Some purists suggested
that accepting free wine, food, trips, etc. is improper. For some reason this
standard is freely levied at wine writers but not at others. Do you expect car
writers to buy the cars they review? Do restaurant critics pick up their own
bill after every meal? (Good example here: Many restaurant critics go out of
their way to be anonymous to eliminate any possibility of bias or
favourable treatment and their
publishers pay the tab.) Reviewers have a simple mandate: I may write about
your product -- for better or worse -- and if you choose to make your products
available for that purpose, thank you; I will do my utmost to be fair. It’s the
cost of doing business on both sides. It’s in the winery’s best interest to get
us to favourably review their products. Sending a bottle or two to my doorstep
is a calculated investment for them, and they’re glad to do it. It can mean
some very cheap publicity. They also understand that I might pan the product --
it’s a two way street.

Now since, I/we accept ‘freebies’,
how do we distance ourselves from bias and conflict of interest, etc.? We
simply do. That too is not optional. However, if I put a restriction in place,
or ask for ‘more’ in order to do a review, I’d better be very careful. There’s
no doubt that having a high profile writer review a product can be ‘worth your
while’, as one commenter put it. Natalie’s mistake in this case was to demand a
subscription fee to produce a review. That is very different from saying up front
“I have a tasting fee of $xx per bottle, no guarantees.” That is fair and it’s
transparent. To say, “I won’t review your wines unless you buy a copy of my
book” is usury.

So Natalie, I know you’re not a
trained journalist. I know you have to have some means of ‘gate keeping’ to
keep the flood of wines to your door at a reasonable ebb. But what you’ve done
by appropriating reviews is unethical. Allowing readers to believe that the
content is yours is unethical. Charging people a fee to read those reviews is
unethical. Demanding that wineries, agents, etc. subscribe to your newsletter
to qualify for a review is unethical. Suggesting that your reviews could have a
favourable result is in a gray
area, but it smacks of something unethical.

The “world’s best drinks writer”,
perhaps, but at my college – a writing school -- Ms Maclean would get an “F”.
-rb

About Me

Something of an 'armchair renaissance man', I have been teaching for over 40 year in colleges, universities, industry, and music studios. In my semi-retirement, I have re-embraced drumming after a 30-year layoff (due to hearing problems).
I have three wine publications on offer (www.frugal-wine.com) one of which is a Canadian Best seller.